The Ship (episode)
Sisko fights to keep the wreckage of a crashed Jem'Hadar fighter. Summary :"Captain's log: Stardate 50049.3. We're conducting a mineral survey of Torga IV, an uninhabited planet in the Gamma Quadrant believed to contain vast deposits of cormaline. Our mission is to determine the feasability of establishing a mining operation on the planet's surface." As the away team conducts their planetary survey, Chief O'Brien and young Ensign Muñiz tease one another. They appear to be forming a close working relationship. Captain Sisko determines that, despite being a long way from supply lines, the planet is a good place to mine. He and Lieutenant Commander Dax are discussing the matter when a ship of some kind crashes on the planet's surface. The runabout beams Sisko and the others to the site of the crash, where they discover a Jem'Hadar warship. The crew find that the warship has landed upside down and enter through a hatch that would normally be used to land troops. Inside, they find numerous corpses, but according to Dax's tricorder, the troops have been dead for hours. O'Brien suspects an inertial dampener failure, which means that when the ship sped up, every bone in the men's bodies was crushed instantly. Although Sisko is excited about the discovery of the ship, he wonders what it was doing so far from Dominion space. Realizing the runabout's tractor beam will be insufficient to tow the ship, he sends for the ''Defiant'' to tow it back to the Alpha Quadrant. Aboard Deep Space 9, Odo has arrested Quark and his "co-conspirator," Dr. Bashir. The trio enter Sisko's office, where Major Kira learns that Quark ordered a shipment of Regalian fleaspiders for Bashir without a permit. However, the Ferengi took the opportunity to smuggle illegal Regalian liquid crystals along with the spiders. An impatient Kira announces she is taking the Defiant to the Gamma Quadrant to retrieve Sisko and the others, and she will be back in a week. Meanwhile, Commander Worf informs Sisko that they have buried the bodies of the warship's crew, 42 Jem'Hadar and one Vorta in all. Suddenly, Ensign Hoya contacts Sisko from the runabout and announces that another warship has just come out of warp; within seconds, the runabout is destroyed and Jem'Hadar soldiers beam to the surface. Sisko and the others take shelter inside the crashed ship, but Muñiz is shot along the way. Oddly, the Jem'Hadar do not follow the Starfleet team into the ship. O'Brien dresses Muñiz's wound while they regroup and formulate a plan. The crew explores the ship and find it minimalistic at best. Among other things, there are two headsets – one for a Vorta and another for the Jem'Hadar First – which seem to be the Dominion equivalent of viewscreens. They are interrupted when Kilana, the Vorta in charge of the newly arrived ship, contacts Sisko over the Dominion comm system. She offers to meet Sisko face to face with one guard each. Sisko agrees to meet Kilana, who is quite amicable in person. However, she does not recognize Sisko's claim to salvage rights for the ship and wants it back. As she and Sisko talk, a lone Jem'Hadar beams into Sisko's ship, intent on stealing something. Meanwhile, Kilana offers to take Sisko and the others back to Federation territory, but Sisko firmly refuses. O'Brien finds the Jem'Hadar and there is a brief struggle before Muñiz manages to shoot the soldier, saving the chief. With Kilana aboard her ship and Sisko back inside his, O'Brien continues to tend to Muñiz, who suspects he is dying. They realize there is an anticoagulant in his blood, an apparent side-effect of the Jem'Hadar weapon, and Muñiz's wound requires immediate attention. Worf and O'Brien have a difference of opinion over this; while the Klingon believes Muñiz should be told to prepare for death, O'Brien is convinced that Muñiz's only chance is to keep fighting. Kilana contacts Sisko again and apologizes for her deception, offering to meet him unarmed and alone (a condition to which she does not hold him) as a show of good faith. When they meet again, Kilana acknowledges the obvious: there is something aboard Sisko's ship she wants. However, neither trusts the other and Sisko refuses to let Kilana retrieve it, while Kilana refuses to tell Sisko what it is. She realizes their conversation is going nowhere, so she beams off the surface as her ship begins to bombard the surface. In the meantime, Muñiz has begun to die. Before long, the crew realizes Kilana is not trying to hit the ship, as the ultritium concussion shells her ship is firing should destroy them in one hit. They continue to search for whatever Kilana wants, while Muñiz's condition continues to deteriorate and he becomes delerious. Tensions continue to mount as the Starfleet group, tired, hungry, and filthy, become increasingly apprehensive. Sisko becomes fed up with the bickering and orders them to pull themselves together. He also orders Muñiz to stay alive. :"Captain's log, supplemental. The Jem'Hadar barrage has continued on and off for ten hours. Chief O'Brien has restored main power and helm control. If we can bring the ship's engines online, we may be able to lift off and escape from here." O'Brien does his best to get the ship up and running, but when they attempt to take off from the planet, the power circuits overload and the condition of the ship's systems becomes even worse. Finally, Muñiz dies, causing a deafening silence to wash over the crew. As Dax comforts Sisko, something begins to drip from the ceiling. They look up to realize one of the bulkheads is actually a Founder. However, it is not attacking but dying, no longer able to hold its form and apparently injured from the accident that killed the ship's crew. As it dies, it cries out, loud enough for Kilana and her men to hear. With the Changeling dead, Kilana beams directly aboard Sisko's ship, alone. She informs him that her soldiers killed themselves for allowing one of their gods to die. It is revealed that both she and Sisko were genuine in their offers (she to let the Starfleet crew go and he to give her whatever was on the ship), but Muñiz and the others died because neither was willing to trust the other. Sisko allows Kilana to take some of the Founder's remains with her as she leaves. The Defiant arrives and tows the Jem'Hadar ship back to DS9. Starfleet is of course very pleased with the find and awards the crew medals, but Sisko laments the death of Muñiz, Hoya, and the others. Dax reminds him that, while their deaths are certainly tragic, they all knew risks when they joined Starfleet, and that while the captured ship might have cost five people their lives, it could help save thousands more. O'Brien holds his own vigil over Muñiz's casket. Worf enters as he does so and reveals that, in Klingon tradition, O'Brien's activity is called ak'voh, or keeping the dead safe from predators while they make their journey to Sto-vo-kor. He offers to help O'Brien protect Muñiz, to which the chief responds, "I'm sure Quique would have liked that." Memorable Quotes "Don't you ''trust me?" "''I'd like to, captain. But I can't, not under these circumstances. There's simply... too much at stake for us." "We've got a lot at stake, too. I won't risk the lives of my crew." "It seems we're approaching an impasse." "We've already arrived." : - Sisko and Kilana "It is only a matter of time." "So we should just kill him, right?" "If you truly are his friend, you will consider that option. It would be a more honorable death than the one he's enduring." "I'm not some bloodthirsty Klingon looking for an excuse to kill my friend." "No. You are just another weak Human, afraid to face death." : - Worf and O'Brien, on Muñiz "I know it's hot. We're filthy, tired, and we've got ten isontons of explosives going off outside. But we will never get out of this if we don't pull it together and start to act like professionals!" : - Sisko "My offer was genuine. All that mattered to me was the Founder." "Then you should have told me about him." "You might have killed him, or made him a hostage." "No! All I wanted was the ship." "And I was willing to let you take it." :- Kilana and Sisko "Do you have any gods, Captain Sisko?" "There are... things I believe in." "Duty? Starfleet, the Federation? You must be pleased with yourself. You have the ship to take back to them. I hope it was worth it." "So do I." : - ' Kilana', Sisko "We will both keep the predators away." : - Worf, to O'Brien as he joined him in guarding Muñiz' body Background Information *"The Ship" marks the 100th episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. *The Jem'Hadar attack ship captured here would later reappear in "A Time to Stand" and "Rocks and Shoals". It is used to enter Cardassian space to destroy a ketracel-white installation. *Ensign Hoya is the first Benzite female seen on Star Trek, and the first Benzite seen without visible breathing apparatus. *When Kilana says that "my men" killed themselves, she must be referring to the Jem'Hadar who were on the planet's surface, as her ship can still function. *The nickname O'Brien uses for Ensign Muñiz is spelled Quique (pronounced KEE-kay), as Enrique is a Spanish name. *It is unclear how Sisko records his captain's log aboard the Jem'Hadar ship. One possibility is that he recorded it to his communicator like Odo in The Ascent. Either that or he had another portable device on which to record it (a PADD perhaps) or he found a way to record it on the Jem'Hadar ship's computer. *This episode shares a few plot elements with the 1992 film Reservoir Dogs. A group of men are holed up in a room with one of their own dying slowly from a shot to the belly. The admonishment of Sisko to be "professionals" is an echo of Mr. Pink from the film. See: *The idea of Klingons keeping vigil over the bodies of the dead seems at odds with prior portrayals, wherein a corpse was considered a worthless shell immediately upon death. However, it is possible that Worf made up the ak'voh for the sake of his friend, much like "gik'tal challenge" in the TNG episode Lower Decks. *While scaling the surface of the planet, O'Brien refers to his childhood climbing mountains in Ireland, to which Muniz replies that he thought Ireland was a land of hills. The question of whether Irish peaks count as mountains or hills was actually the subject of the 1995 film The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain, which featured Colm Meaney as an Irish bar tender who insisted that they were mountains. Links and References Guest Stars *Kaitlin Hopkins as Kilana *F.J. Rio as Enrique Muñiz Co-Stars *Hilary Shepard as Hoya *Ken Lesco as T'Lor (uncredited) ;Unidentified Co-Stars: * Rooney * Bertram * Unnamed Jem'Hadar * Unnamed Changelings References ak'voh; anticoagulant; Benzites; cormaline; ''Defiant'', USS; Dominion; fireworks; Founder; hyper spanner; inertial damper; Jem'Hadar; Jem'Hadar attack ship; professor; Q'lava; Regalian fleaspider; Regalian liquid crystal; runabout (unnamed Danube class starships); Somak; Tiburon; Torga IV; ultritium concussion shell (ultritium); wake |next= }} Ship, The de:Das Schiff es:The Ship nl:The Ship